Wu Yen

This outing from the Milky Way team of award-winning director $$ID=Johnnie To$$ and $$ID=Wai Ka Fai$$ recalls Johnnie To's nonsensical period gabfests starring $$ID=Stephen Chow$$ namely "&&ID=V1441||Name=The Mad Monk&&" and "&&ID=V1229||Name=Justice My Foot&&". The involvement of $$ID=Anita Mui$$ smacks of the latter, which was a breakthrough comedic role for her - one that matched the seasoned prankster blow for blow.

Once again, Johnnie manages to squeeze the laughs out of her cross-dressing role as Emperor Qi, in a loose retelling of this historical tale which spawned the proverb "Warrior queen Wu Yen comes in aid in times of need, but beauty Yin Chun is a fair weathered concubine" - a popular Chinese jibe at male infidelity. In the fashion of true farce, the directors take liberties with the legend. Wu Yen - a female tribal warrior whose feats of heroism and true beauty are marred by a facial birthmark - is played with an appropriate cutesy tenacity by $$ID=Sammi Cheng$$. She meets the Emperor on a dark night where he and entourage (Milky Way stalwarts) are hopelessly lost in the wild woods and thus (in)conveniently fails to see her blemish. In a take on Western medieval quests - Mallory at first as he unwittingly draws a sword from a stone and unleashes a foxy (hermaphrodite) vixen Yin Chun ($$ID=Cecilia Cheung$$ at her most coquettish) - and then answers 3 riddles to win the hand of his warrior bride (a nod to numerous griffin tales and Puccini's Turandot here).

What ensues is a menage-a-trois that wreaks hilarious havoc with history. It turns out that Yin Chun in male form has a crush on Wu Yen who only has eyes for the Emperor. Unrequited and vindictive, Yin Chun turns into a seductress to tempt the royal wastrel away from his destined true love. In apt playful and lecherous form, the tyrant falls for the beauty and banishes his queen to the dungeons - but only till a neighbouring kingdom declares war and he is in need of her strategic battle skills.

The humour is over the top in a very HK manner, eliciting chortles of glee from the cinema audience - like a Stephen Chow film sans Stephen Chow. Anita Mui shines in her comedic turn with emotions torn asunder, reciting traditional Chinese speak tongue firmly in cheek. Milky Way regular $$ID=Lam Shuet$$ almost steals the show in a campy portrayal of a court official. $$ID=Wong Jing$$'s father $$ID=Wong Tin Lam$$ has a cameo as an earth deity and consultant to Anita Mui also playing the Emperor's ancestral spirit whose spells go awry as he is really only in training. Strewn with a mixed bag of gags, most recurrent of which is a running fart joke, a send up of the Olympic games and a Mahjong session that will only be funny to those who understand the game, the high jinks keep coming, perhaps a little overtime. In all, a very HK, very Chinese comedy that is refreshingly different from the glossy romantic comedies of late and will appeal to those familiar with the historical tale.